Public Observing at CCAS

The Cape Cod Astronomy Society holds weekly summer star parties during the summer. (Check their web site for details, but alas, they are done for 2008.) I've managed to miss all of them so far this summer so I was quite pleased to find myself able to attend tonight's.

Unlike the public observing from the New Hampshire Astronomy Society, it seems that CCAS members rarely bring their scopes. This isn't to say that either club is right or wrong. With the big dome and the big scope available for the public, CCAS chooses to use the exceptional facilities. NHAS tends to have mobile star parties, so of course they need to bring out the 'scopes!

But, nothing was stopping me from bringing mine and I just love showing the skies to people. So I packed up the Burgess 1278 and drove off to Dennis Yarmouth High School.

Of course the Clear Sky clock showed a gorgeous forecast and as soon as it got towards dusk, the clouds came, along with the great sunsets. Yes, this is an actual photo from that night.

But the dome was open and I sat down with Mike and Peter and listened as they planned out the night's objects for the guests. Now that is impressive! I went and set up the Burgess and the skies got worse and worse.

Fortunately, holes appeared and we were able to show Jupiter a lot. That was about all we could show at first. Bands were quite visible and everyone was extremely impressed with the Burgess, which really pleased me especially considering that I forgot to bring the Baader Semi-APO filter!

I was especially honored to have Werner Schmidt himself both look my my telescope and be impressed by it. I'll remember that for a long time.

After almost everyone left we pointed the 16" at M13 again just for me, that was very nice. (It was featured all night long for the guests.) And then we tried for Neptune and Uranus. I never did see Neptune but the others were able to discern that it wasn't stellar as you turned it in and out of focus.

We tried the same in Burgess. Uranus was lovely, quite a distinct disk. Same thing as before for Neptune however, others could see it non-stellar but I couldn't.

Next time for sure!